Chrysippus Laughed to Death
“Laughter is the best medicine” is an old adage with which the Greek philosopher Chrysippus (circa 279 – circa 206 BC) might have disagreed since laughter killed him. Chrysippus was one of the most influential intellectuals and men of letters of the Hellenistic era. He greatly influenced and shaped Stoicism, and later Stoic philosophers credited him with laying much of the groundwork upon which they built. In addition, he offered alternatives to the theories of Plato and Aristotle that did much to shape the intellectual landscape of his era. Today, however, Chrysippus is probably best known as the philosopher who laughed himself to death.
He was born in Soli, near today’s Mersin, Turkey, and was an athlete in his youth, dedicated to long-distance running before he turned to philosophy. He packed up and moved to Athens, where he studied Stoicism under Cleanthes, head of the Stoic School. He became the school’s most gifted student, and when Cleanthes died in 230 BC, Chrysippus succeeded him as head of the establishment.
He was a prolific writer who reportedly wrote over 700 books, and although no full treatise remains, fragments of about 475 of his works have survived, including summaries and critical evaluations of the Hellenistic schools. It is mostly from those sources that scholars have cobbled together the materials for a coherent picture of Stoic philosophy and philosophers.
Chrysippus was not just about intellectual pursuits, however: he liked partying, and partied hard, well into old age. At one party, when he was around 73 years old, he got drunk on undiluted wine (Greeks back then mixed wine with water), then saw a donkey eating a fig. Something about that struck him as hilarious, and he went into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter while crying out “now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs“, en route to laughing himself to death.
